"No Salt" KCl dosing

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zenkatydid

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Jul 30, 2005
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i bought some "no salt" to dose potassium. it says the ingredients are potassium chloride, ammonium chloride, magnesium stearate and tricalcium phosphate. is that the right one? by the breakdown it seems to be _mostly_ KCl. and how do i work out how much to use?
 
Read the fert sticky. In the sticky is a link to Chuck's Calculator which will help you with how much to dose. That is the right stuff.
 
i have looked at that, but that's for dosing pure KCl - this is a mixture. i don't know what percentage of it is KCl, and thus how to work out the amount.
 
excellent, thanks!

edit:

ok, so just to make sure before i do something wrong (though i understand it is nigh on impossible to od potassium)...

if i put 1 teaspoon of "no salt" into my tank, i should be adding 15.72ppm. and if i add 1 teaspoon every week, and do a 30% water change, will that keep my levels at something acceptable? since i can't test for potassium, how do i tell how much my plants are using over the week? or does it not really matter? (i have a low light tank that is medium planted now, but will be heavily as i get more plants and they mature).
 
can anyone confirm for me? sorry, this is all new for me, and i don't want to mess it up! thanks... :)
 
Sounds like a good plan to start with. If you plants show signs of deficiencies you can up your dosing or switch to twice a week.
 
well, i'm back after by first attempted dosing. this sounded so easy!

i couldn't get the no salt to dissolve. i put a teaspoon of it into a cup of hot water from the tap, and stirred the heck out of it, but it just swirled around. i thought some had dissolved, so i thought what the heck it'll dissolve eventually... and started to pour it into the aquarium. well, it looked like a snow dome!! (the danios had a ball trying to eat it all *rolls eyes*) i don't know if it eventually dissolve or whatever... but surely there is a better way? could i boil it until it dissolved?
 
Hmm, it must be the other chemicals in the No Salt that is dissolving slowly. KCl is one of the fastest dissolvers (basically anything with a chloride molecule attached will dissolve readily in water), I've dosed it before as a dry fert and it goes right into solution.

Now magnesium chloride takes a bit longer than I would have liked, but it might just be the structure of the crystal from Greg Watson (much larger like a rice grain).

Bottom line is if its not complexed with another molecule directly, the potassium is probably already in the water before being added...
 
it took overnight to dissolve completely, and i can still see the occasional bit that got caught up in a bit of algae or driftwood-fungus. i have quite obvious potassium deficiencies, so i guess i'll just wait and see. i understand the leaves already damaged won't come back, but this should stop any further degradation.
 
On my tanks that have easy to access filters (Such as HOB's), I dose dry ferts into the filter. I figure the highest flow rate is there, allowing the chemicals to dissolve rapidly, and the filter media prevents any excessively large bits to get into the visible portion of the tank.
 
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